[Q] Stock Amazon Apps on Custom Roms? - 7" Kindle Fire HD Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

As much as I love Android 4.3, I still miss a couple of the stock Amazon OS apps on my Kindle. The Play Store version apps just aren't as nice in my opinion. I managed to rip the stock "Launcher.apk" and "KindleForOtter.apk" from a Kinology update.zip I had lying around on my hard drive. I moved them to "/system/app," gave them root permissions (rw-r--r--), and rebooted (knowing it probably wouldn't work). Sure enough, both apps force closed upon launch. So my question is, is there anyway to integrate these apps into JellyBean? If so, what are the files necessary, and how much work would it take?

Ph0enix_216 said:
As much as I love Android 4.3, I still miss a couple of the stock Amazon OS apps on my Kindle. The Play Store version apps just aren't as nice in my opinion. I managed to rip the stock "Launcher.apk" and "KindleForOtter.apk" from a Kinology update.zip I had lying around on my hard drive. I moved them to "/system/app," gave them root permissions (rw-r--r--), and rebooted (knowing it probably wouldn't work). Sure enough, both apps force closed upon launch. So my question is, is there anyway to integrate these apps into JellyBean? If so, what are the files necessary, and how much work would it take?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a question that has been brought up and looked into since the first generation KFs. Many skilled developers have looked into the issue and the answer is always the same...
While it may not be impossible to port apps like the launcher, reader and Silk to non-Amazon ROMs, the work involved would be way more than what it's worth.

Does this apply to things like the Instant Video, which is not Kindle specific, as it also runs on my Sony internet streamer (and actually shows in the play store for that), but don't work on other devices, like my Nexus?
In other words, does whatever check it does to see if it's on a Kindle or other 'approved' device still work on , for example, CM?

Related

Getting Nook apps back on Froyo/Honeycomb?

So I've been playing around with the Honeycomb previews, and was wondering if anyone's been able to get the stock nook reading/lending/etc.. apps working in Honeycomb.
I was able to transfer the games over via adb, although the layout is off on chess and the sensor at the edge doesn't pick up all presses on crossword.
Specifically, I really like the default reading app and side-loading epubs and would like to get that working.
Has anyone done this already or know which dependent apk's different components of the stock nook software use?
TIA
I also would like to get the B&N apps to run properly in Honeycomb. I am currently running rooted 1.1, because I want the B&N apps. My son use Nookbooks for kids and I prefer the default Nook app when I read. I don't purchase many books, but the ones I do buy are from B&N because I want to support them. If we don't support B&N they will stop making great devices like the original Nook and the Nook Color.
I do realize I can run the Android app and buy books via the web, but Nookbooks for kids is not available in the Android market.
Yeah, I'm playing around with it and seeing if I can get anything working with it.
I really like the stock Android apps, but like how much better honeycomb is designed for tablets (vs. froyo/eclair or the stock bn that can only have books in the home screen).
Will post back if I have any success... and I think it's a dumb rule that you need 10 posts to put anything in the dev forum. Supposedly this area is for noobs asking about how to install nookie etc.. and the other is for "dev" but half the posts over in dev are people talking about installation trouble and half the posts here are people posting things that would be better suited to the dev section. /rant
So I adb pushed everything bn over to honeycomb, but nothing shows up. Try to install Reader.apk and get error that it's missing required bncloudapi.
I have the jar file in frameworks, and the permissions files, but not sure if there's something else I should be looking for. TIA

[Q] [Nook HD+] Nook HD+ auto installs apps from B&N

I am new to this, with a B&N Nook HD+ tablet.
Let me just say, this is a terrific place with lots of knowledgeable people in Android and Nook.
I rooted my tablet, and love how it all works.
There is one nagging issue I have. It seems that B&N appeared to install 2 apps that I keep deleting, but they keep re-appearing.
Spotify and Crosswords.
I do not want these apps and wish they would stop installing themselves.
I used SQLite to set in the databases, install foreign apps, and also the other setting to not over the air, install Nook updates.
I tried to find a setting in the various databases to tell the Nook to stop installing these free apps, but cannot find it.
Does anyone know how to stop the Nook from installing these free apps?
I suspect at some point BN might install some free app automatically that might attempt to unroot this device.
Thanks,
Rob
rplourdejr said:
I am new to this, with a B&N Nook HD+ tablet.
Let me just say, this is a terrific place with lots of knowledgeable people in Android and Nook.
I rooted my tablet, and love how it all works.
There is one nagging issue I have. It seems that B&N appeared to install 2 apps that I keep deleting, but they keep re-appearing.
Spotify and Crosswords.
I do not want these apps and wish they would stop installing themselves.
I used SQLite to set in the databases, install foreign apps, and also the other setting to not over the air, install Nook updates.
I tried to find a setting in the various databases to tell the Nook to stop installing these free apps, but cannot find it.
Does anyone know how to stop the Nook from installing these free apps?
I suspect at some point BN might install some free app automatically that might attempt to unroot this device.
Thanks,
Rob
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Get the free Gemini Application Manager on Play Store and block the apps. It adds them to a database that says to ignore them. But that won't help with new apps.
Edit: Gemini gave the warning that ics might be able to override this setting. It did. The app came back. And I did what you did and could find no databases to stop it.
Sent from my Nook HD+ using Tapatalk
Per my new announcement here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=34478962#post34478962
I am closing this thread. Please follow the "Request a new forum" link, and let the staff know a board for the HD is needed.
Per the NEW announcement,
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=34819554#post34819554
I redeclare this thread open...
Solution
Been meaning to track this down for years and finally got around to doing it. The sneaky app that's doing the reinstalls is com.bn.bnappinstaller
Use your app of choice to freeze this (on the off chance you want to have this bloatware factory run again in the future)
That's it, you can uninstall with wild abandon and they will never come back
Displacer said:
Been meaning to track this down for years and finally got around to doing it. The sneaky app that's doing the reinstalls is com.bn.bnappinstaller
Use your app of choice to freeze this (on the off chance you want to have this bloatware factory run again in the future)
That's it, you can uninstall with wild abandon and they will never come back
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was relieved to find this because my husband's HD is "running in the red" because of apps like Spotify, Hulu+, etc., which come unbidden "from the cloud". He'd like to have room for apps of his own choosing (not to mention space for the OS to do its thing...).
But....I tried this and it didn't work. They are back again

[Q] Removing System Apps

I was wondering if there was a way for me to remove the apps that came preloaded but no functional uninstall button (twitter, facebook, amazon kindle, etc) without rooting it? I rooted my nook color successfully a few times last years, but I'd really rather not with the dell just because it really already has the functionality I was looking to get out of the nook (except these annoying apps). It seems to run low on space quickly, much faster than the nook. I don't even need the navigation apps as it is one that has the sim card blocked off so it's wi-fi only. If I do have to root it to get rid of them, what would be the best route to go? Thank you in advance!
Nope! You download Superuser7 and install from Fastboot.
Woops! That wasn't correct! You must install a custom recovery like CWM or TWRP first and than install Superuser7 from that.
cmperry said:
I was wondering if there was a way for me to remove the apps that came preloaded but no functional uninstall button (twitter, facebook, amazon kindle, etc) without rooting it? I rooted my nook color successfully a few times last years, but I'd really rather not with the dell just because it really already has the functionality I was looking to get out of the nook (except these annoying apps). It seems to run low on space quickly, much faster than the nook. I don't even need the navigation apps as it is one that has the sim card blocked off so it's wi-fi only. If I do have to root it to get rid of them, what would be the best route to go? Thank you in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine was rooted with gingerbreak, but I never upgraded it to hc, so it probably doesn't fit your situation.
Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G using xda premium
It seems I may have a problem with my device and not these system apps like I was thinking. I tried to install a 29 mb app today it said insuffiescient space so I unloaded another app and got rid of a few pictures, still wouldn't work. I checked the space and it says I have nearly 12GB available internal and my sd is blank so theres almost 8GB external available. For some reason the device sees the empty space but can't install to it. I have 6 apps and 10 pictures on my devices and it still says theres no space. I guess I'll have to send it to Dell again because I don't know what it's problem is!

Rooted, now what?

I got a new wifi S2, installed the permissive kernel and rooted it. I installed TWRP and made a backup. Now I've got an uninstall app and I've removed a few things; primarily Knox and the security logger so that it quits whining at me. I have a strong desire to never ever use the cloud, create a Samsung account, or a Google account. I really just want to load some books onto it and DLNA some music and videos.
So I want to get rid of all the stuff that I'll never be able to use but it's not clear to me how to identify all that. I'm a long time Unix guy but not at all an android guy. If something prompts me to create an account I know I want to uninstall it, but damned if I can figure out how to identify what to uninstall from what icon I touched.
I've found bloatware lists but they're all somewhat old and not for the S2, so it's not clear to me if I should trust them. I'd like to avoid trial and error "uninstall and reinstall if something doesn't work" or the even more dreaded "uninstall and find out six months later that something doesn't work". Can anyone point me at a good list of what I can remove, or where I can figure out how to determine that for myself? Thanks.
Better start freezen apps instead of uninstalling them. I use titanium backup for that, but you can use whatever you like. Just be carefull freezing or uninstalling OS related apps, you can end in a bootloop, but you always have the odin flash method to reflash your system back to normal. Just don't play around with partitions or /dev .
Right now I using my tablet unrooted and untouched, so I can't be more specific which apps you can freeze without problems.
He doesn't need odin as he has a twrp backup.
I take it you are using System App Remover (root) to uninstall system apps? If so you are pretty safe as they are backed up and can be restored any time if something goes wrong.
Also are you aware without a Google account you will lose part of the functionality of an Android device?
Samsungs account you can do without. All that stuff related to it can be deleted, but don't advise removing any of the Google core services from the stock rom.
If you really want a GAPPless rom then you're better off with a non stock custom rom like CM or AOSP.
Not much in that area of development at the moment, but there are a couple of members working on it.
ashyx said:
He doesn't need odin as he has a twrp backup.
I take it you are using System App Remover (root) to uninstall system apps? If so you are pretty safe as they are backed up and can be restored any time if something goes wrong.
Also are you aware without a Google account you will lose part of the functionality of an Android device?
Samsungs account you can do without. All that stuff related to it can be deleted, but don't advise removing any of the Google core services from the stock rom.
If you really want a GAPPless rom then you're better off with a non stock custom rom like CM or AOSP.
Not much in that area of development at the moment, but there are a couple of members working on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, thanks. If I lose functionality to avoid Google watching over my shoulder I'm all for it. I'm old and probably overprotective of what's my business and not theirs. In truth, I bought the S2 because I have a collection of chess book pdf's and djvu's that I want to be able to read while I'm sitting at my chess board. I got the 9.7 inch S2 because the old eyes aren't what they used to be. Anything I can do beyond that is icing on the cake.
I do have the app remover, and I've removed the stuff that was obvious to me (like the Microsoft Office stubs). But there are still lots of things that bring up a prompt for an account when I run them and it's not clear to me how to figure out what app to remove to get rid of that particular thing. On Linux I could use rpm -q to figure out what rpm contained a file I want to remove and I'd be good to go. I've tried googling some of the app names but the "descriptions" I end up finding are particularly unenlightening. And since this is definitely not my area of expertise I don't really want to operate in "let's remove this and see what happens" even if I can reinstall the app from its backup. I've been doing software development and sysadmin for more than 35 years now and that just doesn't seem like the way to approach this.
I was looking at CM, which seems like it might be what I'm looking for, but it's still in alpha and my skill level is probably not up to coping with that so I'm back with the problem of how to decide what to get rid of.

Free Time keeps losing apps

I bought a 2015 Amazon Fire Kids' Edition and a 32GB SD card for my son for Christmas. I followed the directions here to upgrade to 5.1.1 and maintain root and the 5.0.1 bootloaders, set up Google, etc. We decided to use the one year of Free Time that came with the tablet to make things simpler to set up and maintain, at least initially. However, my son keeps having to download apps, even ones he frequently uses, all over again. There is plenty of space on the SD card, and there appears to be plenty of space on the internal memory too.
I haven't been able to find a lot of discussion of this issue online, and I'm not sure if that's because it is normal and everyone thinks it is ok, or if it is because (especially on XDA) everyone is using some other setup.
Are other folks having this issue? Is there any way to force it to store the apps on the SD card and not constantly download apps that were already installed?
Since this isn't my device I don't want to spend a lot of time messing with it. I just want it to work without complaints. Even my wife is ticked that Free Time works this way!
if you have FireOS, have you tried contacting Amazon? Just wondering... Otherwise mention which ROM you are running.
I have the exact same issue on both my kids tablets. Apps have to be downloaded again very often, they still show as installed in settings. It even does it on apps downloaded from the normal appstore when they are added to the kids area, but the same apps run with no issues when not on a kids profile so I know they don't need to download extra data or update to run. Have you come across anything that is causing this? I'm going to try speaking with Amazon tomorrow. Both mine are unrooted stock.
I have two tablets and having issues with one of them at the moment. Originally I left one stock (kids subscription) and set the other up with slim rom, but ordered a third (another with the kids sub) and gave away the one with slim rom. The one with fire OS has only the lock screen ad remover and OTA blocker mods. It has an 8GB SD card but constantly running out of space, I can't even uninstall apps to make space now, so frustrating.
I thought the 1yr subscription to all the kids content would be great but its no good if you cant actually play or use them. The best thing I done was change the one to slim rom, didn't have one issue, had access to everything on play store and you could still set up parental controls.
Sent from my InFocus M810t using Tapatalk
Do you still get access to the kids content that comes with the subscription?
I got a Fire tablet forma the kids thought the Free time thing was great, but every time an app is launched it seems to be downloaded again. This is frustrating. I also searched but didn't find much on the topic. Any news on what causes this? I have moved all apps to the SD, maybe that's part of the cause?
Sent from my ASUS_T00J using Tapatalk
glock24 said:
I got a Fire tablet forma the kids thought the Free time thing was great, but every time an app is launched it seems to be downloaded again. This is frustrating. I also searched but didn't find much on the topic. Any news on what causes this? I have moved all apps to the SD, maybe that's part of the cause?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Possibly. If the migration method did not utilize symbolic links good chance relocation is the culprit. Move one or two back to internal storage and see what happens.

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